Seven day fire danger forecasts from the National Digital Forecast Database

The National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) provides surface weather data for the next sevens days and can be used to produce forecasts of fire danger. We present a system that downloads and processes these NDFD forecasts and produces estimates of key fire danger rating variables from the United States National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS). We summarize two methods for initializing the forecasts using available point-based fuel moisture values and gridded surface weather observations from the Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis. Finally, we compare grid-based forecast estimates to fire danger rating components and indices calculated at Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS).